"I am convinced that the human heart hungers for constancy. In forfeiting the sanctity of sex by casual, nondiscriminatory 'making out' and 'sleeping around,' we forfeit something we cannot well do without. There is dullness, monotony, sheer boredom in all of life when virginity and purity are no longer protected and prized."

"I beg women to wait. Wait on God. Keep your mouth shut. Don't expect anything until the declaration is clear and forthright. And to the men I say be careful with us, please. Be circumspect."

"But God has set no traps for us. Quite the contrary. He has summoned us to the only true and full freedom."

"The believer alone will be able to hear the call. It comes from beyond ourselves, beyond our society, beyond the climate of opinion and prejudice and rebellion and skepticism in which we live, and beyond our time and taste. It draws toward the center of all things, that still place of which T.S. Eliot wrote : Against the Word the unstilled world still whirledAbout the centre of the silent Word."

"This is the context in which the story must be understood-as one incident in human history, an incident in certain ways and to certain people important, but only one incident. God is the God of human history, and He is at work continuously, mysteriously, accomplishing His eternal purposes in us, through us, for us, and in spite of us."

"He says no in order that He may, in some way we cannot imagine, say yes. All His ways with us are merciful. His meaning is always love."

"If He is God, He is still in charge."

"Think of the self that God has given as an acorn. It is a marvelous little thing, a perfect shape, perfectly designed for its purpose, perfectly functional. Think of the grand glory of an oak tree. God's intention when He made the acorn was the oak tree. His intention for us is ' the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.' Many deaths must go into our reaching that measure, many letting-goes. When you look at the oak tree, you don't feel that the loss' of the acorn is a very great loss. The more you perceive God's purpose in your life, the less terrible the losses seem."

"Waiting silently is the hardest thing of all. I was dying to talk to Jim and about Jim. But the things that we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God."

"One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime. Nor is surrender to the will of God (per se) adequate to fullness of power in Christ. Maturity is the accomplishment of years, and I can only surrender to the will of God as I know what that will is."

"Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering."

"The ways of the world exalt themselves against God. They sometimes look rational and appealing to the most ernest disciple but Christ says to us then what He said to His disciples long ago, when many of them had given u pin disgust, 'Do you also want to leave me?' If we answer as PEter did, 'Lord to whom else shall we go? Your words are words of eternal life,' our rebel thoughts are captured once more. The way of holiness is again visible."

"God will never disappoint us. If deep in our hearts we suspect that God does not love us and cannot manage our affairs as well as we can, we certainly will not submit to His discipline. To the unbeliever the fact of suffering only convinces him that God is not to be trusted, does not love us. To the believer, the opposite is true."

"Money holds terrible power when it is loved."

"I have one desire now - to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it."

"Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them."

"Let not him who accepts light in an instant despise him who gropes months in shadows."

"God withholds blessing only in wisdom, never in spite or aloofness."

"God is God. If He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere but in His will, and that will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to."

"Cruelty and wrong are not the greatest forces in the world. There is nothing eternal in them. Only love is eternal."

"I do know that waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts. Its easy to talk oneself into a decision that has no permanence " easier sometimes than to wait patiently."

"Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone accept, His Lordship. The Cross, as it enters the love life, will reveal the heart's truth."

"We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures to whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live."

"Some of God's greatest mercies are in his refusals. He says no in order that he may, in some way we cannot imagine, say yes."

"Worry is the antithesis of trust. You simply cannot do both. They are mutually exclusive."

"We are women, and my plea is Let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is."

"The question is simply,'Who is your master?'Once that's settled, you ask whether any word have been spoken. If it has, you have your orders."

"Must we always comment on life? Can it not simply be lived in the reality of Christ's terms of contact with the Father, with joy and peace, fear and love full to the fingertips in their turn, without incessant drawing of lessons and making of rules?"

"Christianity teaches righteousness, not rights. It emphasizes honor, not equality. A Christian's concern is what is owed to the other, not what is owed to himself."

"There is no ongoing spiritual life without this process of letting go. At the precise point where we refuse, growth stops. If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul. It is easy to make a mistake here, 'If God gave it to me, we say, 'its mine. I can do what I want with it. No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of " if we want to find our true selves, if we want real life, if our hearts are set on glory."

"We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others."

"The disciplined Christian will be very careful what sort of counsel he seeks from others. Counsel that contradicts the written Word is ungodly counsel. Blessed is the man that walketh not in that."

"Either we are adrift in chaos or we are individuals, created, loved, upheld and placed purposefully, exactly where we are. Can you believe that? Can you trust God for that?"

"This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive.Love is not possessive.Love is not anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own ideas.Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage.Love is not touchy.Love does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that stands when all else has fallen."

"It takes a while for revelry to turn to reverence, and much repetition of truth to eventual turn young zeal into habitual channels for good."

"Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands."

"His enthusiasm and willingness to use what he learned made him get ahead in Spanish."

"Ponnammal set the example for the others by quietly doing what they did not care to do. Her spirit created a new climate in the place, and the time came when there was not one nurse who would refuse to do whatever needed to be done."

"Failure means nothing now, only that it taught me life."

"Discipline is the wholehearted yes to the call of God. When I know myself called, summoned, addressed, taken possession of, known, acted upon, I have heard the Master. I put myself gladly, fully, and forever at His disposal, and to whatever He says my answer is yes."

"Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God did not protect His own Son. He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process."

"Amy Carmichael's great longing was to have a 'single eye' for the glory of God. Whatever might blur the vision God had give her of His work, whatever could distract or deceive or tempt other to seek anything but the Lord Jesus Himself she tried to eliminate."

"Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all."

"The Word of God I think of as a straight edge, which shows up our own crookedness. We can't really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture."

"Stand true to your calling to be a man. Real women will always be relieved and grateful when men are willing to be men."

"Experience had quickly taught her that she could not survive the storms without the anchor of the constraining love of Christ and what she called the 'Rock-counsciousness' of the promise given her, 'He goeth before."

"Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you."

"We are not asked to SEE,' said Amy. 'Why need we when we KNOW?' We know--not the answer to the inevitable Why, but the incontestable fact that it is for the best. 'It is an irreparable loss, but is it faith at all if it is 'hard to trust' when things are entirely bewildering?"

"I believe a woman, in order to be a good wife, must be (among other things) both sensual and maternal."

"What sort of world might it have been if Eve had refused the Serpents offer and had said to him instead, 'Let me not be like God. Let me be what I was made to be -- let me be a woman?"